


roots in your dreamland

by valenight



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Is Trying His Best, Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish-centric, Canon Compliant, College Student Adam Parrish, Established Relationship, Harvard Student Adam Parrish, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, M/M, POV Adam Parrish, Party, Post-Call Down the Hawk, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valenight/pseuds/valenight
Summary: "If he really thought about it, though, losing Ronan wasn’t like losing a kidney at all. It was more like losing a lung. It was more like losing his mind. But Adam didn’t let himself think about that— he had gotten very good at compartmentalizing."adam copes with ronan's disappearance. featuring: a contemplative walk around a deserted college campus, daydreaming at a house party, a dorm room ritual, and lots of repressed emotion.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 24
Kudos: 121





	roots in your dreamland

Saturdays at Harvard were usually rather moderate. The chaotic energy of the school week dissipated as students left town for the weekend or sealed themselves up in their dorm rooms, desperately trying to finish all of the term papers and lab reports that came with the prestige of an Ivy League education.

  
The halls cleared out, the courtyards emptied, and the typical bustle of the campus was reduced to a murmur.

  
Saturdays at Harvard a week after most people had already gone home for winter break were rather desolate.

  
It was the wind echoing through a vacant corridor, a conversation heard from two rooms over through the air vents, it was the sound of heeled shoes clinking up a staircase in an empty lecture hall, and it was Adam Parrish, alone in the middle of it all.

  
Half of his college friends had left campus immediately after finals; Fletcher was spending the break somewhere in eastern Europe, and Elliot had gone back to their family’s estate in Ann Arbor. Benji was waiting until next week for his parents to send their chauffeur to collect him and drive him back to New York, and Gillian was a part of some honors organization that required her to stay at school for a few more days.

  
And then it would be just Adam.

  
He supposed he could have gone back to the Barns if he really wanted to, but with Declan and Matthew there he wasn’t sure if he was still welcome, and with Ronan gone, it didn’t really feel like going home anyway.

  
It had been a little over a month since Adam had heard from him last, and if he didn’t think about it too hard or for too long, it only felt a little bit like he had lost a part of his own body. It was terrible, but it was something he could technically live without, like a kidney of half of his liver.

  
If he really thought about it, though, losing Ronan wasn’t like losing a kidney at all. It was more like losing a lung. It was more like losing his mind. But Adam didn’t let himself think about that— he had gotten very good at compartmentalizing.

  
So he didn’t think about the last time he had seen Ronan. He didn’t think about how he had forced himself to let go and how he had left Ronan standing alone in the bluegrass. He didn’t think about where Ronan could be, or when he would return, or if he would return, and he didn’t think about how the last several messages that he had sent him had been left unread.

  
Adam achieved this by keeping his mind constantly occupied, which had turned out to be quite easy up until the end of the semester. He spent nearly every waking minute working on final projects or studying for exams. While he was awake, he thought of only coursework, and while he slept, he didn’t think at all. He had never been much of a dreamer.

  
But inevitably, the assignments were finished, the exams were completed, the essays couldn’t be edited any further, and despite Adam’s most fervent attempts, he couldn’t seem to find a professor willing to assign six weeks’ worth of extra credit work to keep him distracted.

  
So now he had to get creative.

  
Adam had only left the Harvard campus a handful of times since moving to Cambridge, but he still hadn't managed to explore much more than a third of the place. The sheer size of it was still rather intimidating, and once classes had started, he had never found adequate time to linger anywhere.

  
So, Adam had decided to give himself a day to wonder.

  
He walked in circles around empty courtyards, peered into tinted classroom windows, and studied the inscriptions on commemorative bricks as though he would be quizzed on their contents later. He was determined to memorize every hidden path and each of the cracks in the pavement, to understand this place as thoroughly as possible because nothing else in his life was making any sense.

  
Back in Henrietta, he had known every intersection, every beaten path, derelict building, and 24-hour convenience store. He knew exactly how long it took to bike from the fire station to the public library, and which neon letters had burnt out in the signs above every grocery store.

  
It wasn’t that Adam had known the town so much better than any of its other lifelong residents, but rather, that the town had known him. Henrietta knew things about him that no person could ever touch. It had seen things that he would never reveal to anyplace else.

  
Adam had never felt known in Henrietta, but he didn’t quite feel known here either. He had traded one half of himself for the other and felt no less unbalanced.

  
There was only one place where Adam had felt able to be his entire self, where he felt like he was understood, where we felt like he was enough. But he wasn’t letting himself think about that now.

  
Adam brought his eyes up from the pavement to find that his wanderings had led him to an ornate, glass-paneled door. It was the entrance to one of the libraries that he had never been inside of before. At the same time as he made a move toward the entrance, a group of students exiting the building brushed past him in a hurry. One of the boys in the group knocked his shoulder against Adam’s. It wasn’t too hard, but sudden contact brought him a shocking reprieve from his thoughts.

  
The boy gave a muttered “sorry,” as he shuffled away, but he didn’t look back.

* * *

  
Adam hovered in a dimly lit corner of the library thumbing through a collection of short stories. At least he assumed it was a collection of short stories. It was written in Hebrew, so he could only guess at its contents from its formatting and the other books in proximity to it.

  
He had been meaning to check out some of the special collections here, though he couldn’t find it in himself now to feign excitement. Rare books had always been more of Gansey's forte, anyway.

  
Just then he felt a pang of jealousy for his best friend that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He would never be able to enjoy learning the same way Gansey did, just like he would never be able to enjoy repairing a car in the same way as someone whose life had never depended on their ability to do so. It was too close to home.

  
From across the library, he overheard a boy in a navy blue suit chatting up a student librarian. The librarian was placing books from a metal cart back into their proper places on the shelves while the boy in the suit leaned against a row of presidential biographies.

  
_“I guess, like, objectively my childhood was kind of shit, but it’s like a cavity in someone else’s tooth you know? Not such a big deal to me.”_

  
Adam winced but resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He wondered if he would ever be able to discuss his own childhood in such a cavalier manner. He was also fairly certain that the navy-blue-suit-boy had not come up with that cavity analogy on his own, and considered looking into it later.

Adam slid the possible book of short stories back onto the shelf. He heard the student librarian politely decline the boy’s request for her phone number as he turned a corner into the stairwell.

Although Adam found the smell of old books rather terrible, there was something aesthetically appealing about them. He liked the idea that although the pages were worn, the covers scratched, and the embossments faded, they had still been determined as holding something of value. If they were battered on the outside, it didn’t matter, as long all of the important information inside of them was intact.

  
They reminded him of himself.

  
He had been paging through volumes for nearly half an hour when he heard his own name from somewhere behind him.

  
He turned around to find Gillian, wearing two out of three pieces to a suit over a white button-up, and Benji, the sleeves of his sweater stretched up to his fingertips.

  
“Hey, loser!” Gillian said brightly, “The fuck are you doing here? We’ve hardly seen you all week.”  
  
Adam shrugged, “We must be out of sync,” he said, as though he hadn’t been intentionally limiting his interactions with everyone he knew. Then he frowned, remembering the first half of the statement, “What are you two doing here?”  
  
“We were kind of looking for you,” Benji said in his typically timid manner.  
  
“We wanted to talk,” Gillian added.  
  
“About what?”

“You haven’t seemed like yourself recently,” Gillian said, “You’ve been quieter, distant.”  
  
Adam refrained from displaying his amusement in his features, “quiet” and “distant” were once two of his main descriptors.  
  
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” he replied.  
  
Gillian and Benji exchanged a glance. Whatever was coming next, neither of them wanted to be the one to say it.  
  
“This doesn’t have to do with Ronan does it?” Gillian asked, “You’ve been acting differently since you went to see him last month, and after what happened with him before that he just seemed a bit…” she trailed off, uncertain as to how to finish the sentence. She turned to Benji for assistance.  
  
“Uh, off?” Benji suggested. He was hiding part of his face behind the collar of his shirt.  
  
“You really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam replied dismissively. It had come out sounding meaner than he had intended it to, but it was difficult not to be defensive. It was dawning on him that he now lived in a reality where his friends somehow thought worse of his boyfriend than of his father, and it was making him feel uneasy.  
  
“We don’t mean to pry,” Gillian said, “We’re just a bit…”  
  
“Concerned,” Benji finished.  
  
“Yes, right. Concerned.”  
  
Adam frowned. He was appreciative of their worry but disconcerted by the nature of it.  
  
_These people don’t know me at all._ He thought.  
  
_That’s the way you wanted it, remember?_ He told himself.  
  
He forced the corners of his mouth into an affiliative smile, “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, “Thank you though.”  
  
His friends returned his smile, though they didn’t look too convinced.  
  
“Tell him about the party,” Benji said.  
  
“Oh, right. Yes!” Gillian exclaimed, eyes suddenly a few shades brighter, “It’s later tonight, hosted by one of the guys from my Honors club. Nothing too crazy, but it should be fun. We’d really like for you to come with us, we’ve missed having you around.”  
  
Adam had been to a handful of college parties with his friends before, all of which had failed to interest him much, but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. He also figured that rejecting the offer would only raise more suspicion, so he politely accepted the invitation and agreed to meet up with them in a few hours.  
  
“Maybe it’ll cheer you up,” Benji added, and then turned away, leaving Adam standing alone between the bookshelves.  
  


* * *

  
An hour before he was meant to go to a house party that he had no desire to attend, Adam sat on the bed in his dorm room, fully prepared to leave. He regretted not checking out any books from the library earlier, as he realized he didn’t have anything to occupy himself while he waited.  
  
While he sat perched on the edge of his mattress, his phone buzzed from across the room. He immediately sprang up to retrieve it, his mind failing to convince the rest of his body not to get his hopes up.  
  
His heart was beating a bit faster than he cared to admit as he looked at the screen, but the caller ID informed him that it was only Gansey.  
He exhaled slowly through his nose before answering the call.  
  
“Ah, glad to catch you, Parrish!” Gansey’s voice rang, cordially cheerful as always. “I hope you’re hearing me alright, I’m wary of the service in this place.”  
  
“Hi, Adam,” Blue called out in the background. “Has it snowed there yet? We haven’t been anywhere below 75 degrees in weeks. I miss my sweaters.”  
  
Adam listened politely as his friends recounted the details of their last week of travels, speaking only when asked a question or prompted to give input on something. Blue provided several fulsome descriptions of Argentinian trees, and after offering two separate anecdotes about the South American railway system, Gansey determined that they could no longer avoid the obvious.  
  
“So, how are you doing with—”  
  
“I’m fine,” Adam interjected. He rather desperately did not want to talk about it.  
  
Blue sighed, “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any _less_ emotionally available.”  
  
Adam ignored this comment. He turned his head to face his dorm room window, and stared fixedly out of it, as though he would find some excuse to end the conversation if he looked hard enough.  
  
“We just want you to know,” Gansey started again, “that we understand. He’s not just yours. It’s hard for all of us.”  
  
Adam knew that Gansey was right, that there would probably never again be a time where one of them wasn’t the others’ business. But he’d been doing a decent job at holding himself together, and he didn’t trust himself to say any more on the topic without breaking, so he just said, “Okay. Thank you both.”  
  
There was a long pause, and Adam considered ending the call there, but it didn’t feel right to end on such an uncertain note. “Should I do a reading for you?” he asked.  
  
Gansey and Blue murmured in agreement, and Adam retrieved his tarot cards from one of his drawers where he had hidden them under several notebooks and flyers. He imagined Persephone would not have been pleased with this arrangement, nor with his failure to set them outside to cleanse during the last several full moons.  
  
Since summer had ended, Adam had been more or less neglecting all of his psychic responsibilities. It had been a while since he had touched his cards at all, much less done a proper reading. His friends waited patiently on the line while he shuffled the deck and attempted to establish a connection.  
  
He did Gansey first. Adam’s clairvoyance was better ascribed to vast, universal concepts than to individual people, and that made personal readings, especially ones over the phone, a bit difficult. This time, however, he found the correct card almost instantly. The card was warm underneath his fingertips as he turned it over. It displayed an image of a draped figure staring in dismay at three chalices that lay overturned at their feet. Two more chalices stood upright on the opposite side of the figure, though they didn’t appear to notice those: The Five of Cups.  
  
The longer Adam stared at the picture on the card, the stranger he felt. It didn’t seem right, not for Gansey anyway. “Hold on,” he said, “let me try again.”  
  
He closed his eyes and reshuffled the deck, this time placing his focus outward. He ran a thumb carefully across each individual card and stopped where he felt the most energy. He selected the warmest card and turned it over.  
  
It was the Five of Cups.  
  
Adam let out a noise of frustration.  
  
“Is everything okay?” Gansey asked, his voice a bit wary.  
  
“I keep getting the same card, but there’s something wrong. It’s not…” Adam trailed off and frowned at the card in his hand.  
  
“Well, what card is it?”  
  
Adam sighed, “It’s the Five of Cups,” he said.  
  
He heard Blue chime in from the other side of the call, “The Five of Cups symbolizes grief,” she said, “worry and sadness from loss.”  
  
Adam felt himself becoming irritated, “I know what it means, Blue.”  
  
Blue let out a sound like she was about to counter with something haughty, but stopped herself.  
  
Adam felt even more irritated at her reticence to fight with him like she was worried he might break at the slightest pressure.  
  
“Hm,” Gansey said, there was a slightly awkward pause before he continued, “I’m not sure if th-”  
  
“It’s not your card,” Adam said, “It’s mine.”  
  
“It’s okay to miss him, Adam,” Blue said.  
  
Adam considered how Ronan might have reacted to the conversation if he were there. It all seemed absurd. The serious tones, the lowered voices, everyone refusing to say his name like it was a curse. _“Stop being so fucking weird,”_ he would have said.  
  
Adam shuffled the card back into his deck and began the reading over again. When he finished, he said goodbye to Gansey and Blue, filed the cards neatly back into their box, and stuffed them into the back of his drawer.  
  
He started again toward the window but stopped when he spotted something on the floor in the center of the room. He crouched down to find that one of his tarot cards had slid out of his grasp and onto the ground.  
  
Adam knew it was the Five of Cups before he turned it over. He sat cross-legged on the floor and studied it between his fingers.  
  
Adam didn’t often do readings for himself, but when he did, or when one of the women at Fox Way did for him, he almost never drew cups. He was usually the airy swords: analytical and sharp, or the one of the major arcana: enigmatic and vast. He was hardly ever the watery cups: emotional and uncontrolled. Every part of him that was human wanted to ignore the warmness he felt in his fingertips when picking up the Five of Cups, and every part of him that was something else knew that ignoring it wouldn’t matter.

* * *

  
The party was meant to take Adams’s mind off of things for a bit, to give him a reason to turn his brain off, if only for an evening. If his college friends had known him better, in the way that Gansey, Ronan, or Blue did, they would have realized that this was an impossible task. Adam Parrish would stop thinking when he stopped breathing.  
  
The entire ordeal only served to trouble Adam further. It reminded him of everything he hated about his peers: their privilege, their indulgence, their loudness. Adam didn’t drink either, and until now, he had never understood how truly isolating it could be. It was like everybody else had access to some hidden emotion deep inside of them, something that made them carefree and stupid and very annoying. He didn’t question his decision not to drink, but it was hard not to feel envious of them all. He felt like a strange, sober alien.  
  
He was leaning against a wall opposite the dining room, holding a room temperature bottle of water that he had brought along himself when he heard a murmur beside him.  
  
He turned to find a girl who was half a head shorter than him wearing her long, dark hair in a complicated side braid. He caught a strong whiff of perfume mixed in with the smell of whatever was in the purple concoction she held inside of a blue plastic cup.  
  
The noise had come from his deaf side, and there were too many layers of music and simultaneous conversations for Adam to sort through. It was also harder for him to hear higher-pitched, female voices in general, so he had no idea what the girl had said, though she must have said something because she was looking at him expectantly with wide, green eyes.  
  
She must have caught onto the fact that he hadn’t heard her from his puzzled expression because she laughed a little and repeated herself, a bit louder, “I said: did you come here alone?”  
  
“Oh sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” Adam replied. He didn’t tell her that he was half-deaf though, because he wasn’t prepared to come up with a fake story about how he had lost his hearing in case she decided to inquire further. He had also begun to feel weird about lying lately, even if it was over something small. It felt like he was betraying Ronan somehow. “My friends are around somewhere,” he added, although he hadn’t been able to locate either Gillian or Benji for the past twenty minutes.  
  
“I’ll keep you company for a while then,” the girl said.  
  
The two of them exchanged basic information about their majors and the classes that they were taking next semester and talked briefly about the oddness of college parties. Adam nodded along as the girl mused how strange it was that they could all be in the same place with so much in common and yet never really know each other.  
  
The girl was clearly flirting with him, and Adam felt a bit bad that he was too stupidly in love with someone else to humor her, and too inside of his own head to even recall her name mere minutes after she had given it.  
  
He looked around the dim room and wondered how Ronan might have reacted to the situation if he were there. As much as he pretended not to be bothered by anything, Adam knew it would have made him jealous, and he found himself imaging a version of Ronan emerging from around one of the corners in the dining room, finding a way to excuse Adam from the conversation, grabbing his hand tightly and leading him around a dark corridor where he would press him gently against a wall and kiss him until he forgot where he was.  
  
The entire fantasy was dream-like and embarrassing, but Adam couldn’t find the energy to chastise himself for it. He wanted it terribly. He wanted it so terribly that he felt a bit sick.  
  
“You’re thinking about someone else,” the girl said, bringing him back to reality. There was a hint of sadness in her voice, and Adam gave her a half-smile.  
  
“Yes, I am,” he said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright,” she said, “I hope you find them.”  
  
Adam shook his head a little, “I hope I find him too,” he replied wistfully.  
  
The girl looked at him, confused, “Your friends, I mean,” she clarified.  
  
“Oh, yeah. That’s what I meant too,” he lied.  
  
_Sorry, Ronan._

* * *

  
Adam Parrish did not cry for many things.  
  
He hadn’t cried the last time that his father had hit him, and he hadn’t cried the day after when a doctor had told him that he would probably never hear again in his left ear because of it. He hadn’t cried when his best friend had died at his feet and he had been powerless to stop it; he had numbed himself too much to feel anything then. He hadn’t cried when Declan had told him about Ronan’s disappearance, and he hadn’t cried once during the weeks that followed as Ronan remained missing and the messages on his phone remained unanswered.  
  
But now, sitting on the curb outside of a fancy, Massachusetts colonial house full of careless partygoers, he was overwhelmed. He was silent as tears blurred his vision and his throat grew tight.  
  
Adam didn’t understand where all of this sadness had come from, but now that he knew it was there he couldn’t stop noticing it. It was like everything from the past month that he hadn’t let himself cry over had caught up to him. Everything from the past year. Everything. He was a faucet with a broken handle, and he poured everything inside of him out into the streets of the empty Cambridge suburb.  
  
For the hundredth time that day, Adam wished that Ronan was there, and it only made him want to cry more.  
  
“Adam?” The voice was not Ronan’s, it was Gillian’s. She and Benji were walking down the porch steps toward Adam’s spot on the curbside. Adam didn’t bother to hide his face as they came closer.  
  
“Well,” Gillian said, “It looks like our roles have _finally_ reversed.”  
  
“We’ve been waiting for you to break down all semester,” Benji added from behind her.  
  
Adam wiped underneath his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater, “Thanks guys,” he said flatly.  
  
The pair sat down on the curb, one on either side of Adam. “We were starting to think you were some sort of sociopath,” Gillian said, elbows propped up on her knees, “You’re, like, ridiculously put together.”  
  
“You’re like a perfect person,” Benji muttered, he looked up toward the moon and sighed.  
  
Adam let out a terrible laugh, it was haggard and strange, and it did not sound like a noise he would have made at all. Once it was out though, Adam found that he couldn’t stop, just like with his tears from before. How ridiculous it was that he had managed to convince so many people that he was something so far from the truth. He had succeeded in completely obscuring his past, but he only felt more like a fraud. He laughed until his shoulders shook and he could no longer breathe, then let out a great sigh and curled over with his head in his hands.  
  
“I guess this was a dumb idea,” Gillian said, “sorry.”  
  
“It’s not your fault. I’ll be okay,” Adam said, even though he hadn’t fully stopped crying.  
  
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Benji asked.  
  
Adam lifted his head out of his hands and started to shake it, then froze, thinking, “There’s actually one thing that you could help me with.”  
  


* * *

  
Adam didn’t exactly trust his college friends to spot him while he scried, especially since they couldn’t really know what he was actually doing, but he didn’t think that he had a choice. He wished that he had Ronan there to help him, but if Ronan was there, he wouldn’t have been doing this in the first place.  
  
“Okay, so this is the weird part,” Adam said. He was currently sitting on the floor of his dorm room. Gillian and Benji sat across from him on the opposite side of a lemon verbena scented candle that Gillian had been hiding in a box underneath her bed frame. Adam pulled a silver pocket knife from his jeans, “If I’m spaced out for longer than ten minutes, you need to cut my arm.”  
  
Gillian looked apprehensive, “I don’t know about this,” she said.  
  
Benji was staring wide-eyed at the knife in Adam’s hand, “I just thought that maybe we could take you for ice cream or something.”  
  
“I know it seems crazy, but I used to do this back home all the time.” Adam had told them that he was about to undergo a total body meditation in an attempt to reduce his anxiety. It wasn’t a great excuse for what was about to happen, but it was maybe more understandable than explaining that he was going to attempt to astral project into his boyfriend’s dream. He really hoped that it was his psychic ability telling him that Ronan would be asleep right now and not just blind faith.  
  
His friends blinked back at him. They appeared unsure as to whether they should humor his request or report him to a counselor.  
Eventually, Gillian took the knife from Adam’s hand and set it down on the carpet beside her. “Okay, we’ll do it. Mainly because I’m morbidly curious. If something goes wrong though, remember that my aunt’s a lawyer.”  
  
Adam promised not to sue in the event of injury and then shifted his gaze toward the candle’s single flame. It didn’t take long to fall away from his body, but his mind always held on a bit tighter to reality; it was a scary thing, to take your mind away from yourself.  
  
His breathing slowed and his vision blurred, and he thought of another land entirely.

* * *

  
Adam had gone into the dream expecting the worst, the unfathomable awfulness that he had experienced the last few times he had scried, the unnerving feeling of being watched through his bedroom window at night amplified by a million.  
  
When he got there, though, it wasn’t terrible at all. It felt just the same as it had before when it had been a place he had trusted, a place he had known.  
  
It was a homecoming.  
  
He had been here before, on summer nights while staring into a pool of liquid. There were things here that he had imagined months ago, kept preserved inside of the dream like a flower pressed under a sheet of glass.  
  
He currently stood in a forest at the bases of trees that stretched hundreds of feet into the sky. Each of the branches was ornamented with lights and strings of golden twine, and invisible creatures produced a subtle symphony of night noises. Above the forest line, the sky was littered with more stars than would have been possible in a reality overcome by light pollution, and the moon was high and tinted ever so slightly blue.  
  
At the edge of the forest, the landscape abruptly changed. Soil gave way to sand as Adam stepped out onto an empty shore. The noise from the night creatures faded, replaced by intense quiet. Usually, Adam might have found such an absence of noise unnerving, but this was a comforting sort of silence. There was no pressure here to do anything but exist.  
  
He stepped further out toward the seaside and scanned his eyes across the shoreline for any signs of life.  
  
Ronan was there, sitting alone on a wooden pier, legs hung over the edge of it. The water below him shimmered in a variety of impossible colors and he threw stones that dissolved into seafoam the moment they touched the water.  
  
A dozen feelings rose up inside of Adam, but the only one he could name was relief. “Ronan?” he said cautiously.  
  
Ronan ceased tossing his stones but he didn’t turn around. He lifted his head like he had heard Adam’s voice, but continued facing the sea. When he spoke, his voice was ice, “I’m not in the mood for this,” he said, “ _Abite._ ”  
  
For a moment, Adam stood frozen in surprise. It had been quite some time since Ronan had addressed him with such hostility, and it was unpleasant to realize how much it hurt him. “What the hell? It’s me.”  
  
“You’re speaking English now?” Ronan sneered, “That’s fucking new.”  
  
At this, Adam was finally able to make sense of things; Ronan thought he was a dream. He had no reason to believe that Adam was anything more than a figment of his own imagination. Adam considered how many times Ronan must have dreamt this, of seeing him again, to not be able to believe it when it was truly happening.  
  
“Ronan, I’m here.”  
  
“You know I can’t believe that.”  
  
Adam could tell that he was trying to sound as cold as possible, but when Ronan finally looked up and found Adam’s eyes, he softened. Adam still looked like himself after all.  
  
Ronan held his gaze for a moment longer and then turned back to face the sea. “ _Sede,_ ” he said, and Adam obeyed his request, sitting down beside him on the pier.  
  
They sat like that for several moments, untouching apart from their legs pressed together from the hip to the knee. Adam wanted to reach his hand out, to place his head on Ronan’s shoulder, or to say any of the things that he needed to, but everything here felt so delicate and he was scared of losing even this, so he just sat there.  
  
Eventually, Ronan turned to him, looking kinder but more fragile. He brushed his thumb across the space under Adam’s left eye, “You’re beautiful,” he said.  
  
“Oh, uh, thanks,” Adam replied.  
  
It wasn’t _impossible_ to imagine Ronan saying something like this to him in real life, but the way he said it here with such easy confidence suggested that he had spoken to a dream version of Adam like this many times before. Adam almost felt a bit envious of the version of himself conjured by Ronan’s mind, he got the purest form of Ronan, unfiltered by shame or embarrassment.  
  
Ronan pressed a kiss to a spot between Adam’s neck and jaw, and then to his good ear. He cupped his face and said, very gently, “I love you.”  
This seemed even less like something that waking Ronan would have done, and Adam found himself feeling both intrigued and guilty at once. It was like he was intruding on something, but in theory, it was something meant for him. It was like every time he thought he had Ronan figured out, he would have the sheet pulled out from under him, and be left once again staring in awe.  
  
“I love you,” Adam said, because he missed Ronan terribly and because he was too exhausted to try again to convince Ronan that he was not a dream and because it was so very true.  
  
Ronan’s hands stiffened from underneath Adam’s jaw, something about the way Adam had said the words had broken the spell of the dream. Ronan pushed himself back and opened his eyes very wide, “Adam?”  
  
Adam felt a thrill at the change in his tone, “I told you, It’s me.”  
  
Ronan’s eyes darted across Adam’s face, he opened his mouth as though he was about to ask for an explanation, but in the end, he just pulled Adam closer and wrapped his arms tightly around his chest, “You’re okay?”  
  
“I’m fine I–” Adam tried to sort through his thoughts, but there were too many of them happening all at once. There were a hundred things he needed to say, but he knew that they were running out of time, “I got your message,” he said.  
  
Ronan’s body tensed against his, “Fuck, I’m…”  
  
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked, but even then he already knew, he felt the dream collapsing around them.  
  
Ronan’s expression was pained as he pushed himself away, “I’m waking up.”  
  
Adam pressed his fingertips to Ronan’s lips for a second and then he was alone.  
  


* * *

  
_Well, I don’t want to do it!  
  
This is crazy, what are the odds that he’s just screwing with us?  
  
I don’t know, Gillian, he looks pretty spaced out.  
  
It’s been almost nine minutes, we need to figure out which one of us-_

Adam came back to his body to find Gillian trying to force his pocket knife into the hand of a very anxious looking Benji. He waited a few seconds for his mind to catch up with his body, and then began to rub circles on his eyelids with the backs of his palms. He regained his ability to speak and interrupted Gillian and Benji’s bickering, “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m back.” His sight evened out, and he looked up to see his two friends wearing matching shocked expressions.  
  
Gillian spoke first, “Okay, I don’t know what kind of esoteric “meditation” that was, Adam, but it was freaky as hell.”  
  
“I think I’m going to faint,” Benji said, clutching his stomach.  
  
Adam didn’t know what to say. He hoped that his friends had bought his story, but he felt like he had already revealed way too much, and he didn’t think that they were stupid.  
  
“Do you at least feel better?” Gillian asked, she looked genuinely concerned, and Adam was grateful for it.  
  
He thought back to the dream. He hadn’t figured out anything about where Ronan was or how long he would be gone, but he at least knew that Ronan was alright and somewhere safe enough to dream. He had at least been able to _see_ him, Ronan had at least known that it was really him. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was a start. “Kind of, yes,” he replied, “Thank you both, so much.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Benji said in his small voice, “Please don’t make us do it again, though.”

* * *

  
The next morning, Adam called Declan to recount the events of the night before.  
  
_Jesus, can’t either one of you be a little bit normal?  
_  
Adam had also told him that he had decided he needed to come back to the Barns. He couldn’t just hang around here while something terrible was happening. He needed to do something, to try to make contact again or at least help in whatever way he could.  
  
While packing his things, he again remembered Persephone’s tarot cards sat in the bottom of his drawer. He retrieved the cards from their velvet bag and shuffled them between his fingers for several seconds before carefully choosing one to turn over.  
  
The card displayed an image of a man standing in front of eight wooden pillars. Though his head was bandaged and his eyes were weary, he still stood tall, clutching a ninth pillar in support: The Nine of Wands.  
  
_Perseverance.  
_  
Adam felt balanced for the first time in weeks.  
  
He recalled the image on the Nine of Wands later that afternoon as he helped Gillian move a box of houseplants from her dorm room to the trunk of her car.  
  
“Don’t forget about us over break,” she said, “You’re still staying here, right?”  
  
“No,” Adam said, “I need to go home for a while.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading this! I haven't written a proper fanfic in ages but I've had this concept in my head since I finished cdth and really wanted to make something with it. Feel free to drop by my [tumblr](https://valenight.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat or if you want to make fun of me for titling this after a Taylor Swift lyric! ♡


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